Author Archives: Tom Turner

Landscape setting of the Avebury Stone Circle

The landscape setting of Avebury Stone Circle: it is a visually contained enclosure

Avebury is a more appealing place than Stonehenge. It is more beautiful and, to me, it has a greater sense of ‘spiritual mystery’. The Unesco summary is that “Stonehenge is the most architecturally sophisticated prehistoric stone circle in the world” and that “Avebury prehistoric stone circle is the largest in the world. The encircling henge consists of a huge bank and ditch 1.3km in circumference, within which 180 local, unshaped standing stones formed the large outer and two smaller inner circles.”

I wonder if the reason for my being more attracted to Avebury is that, because of the remaining trees and the high earth bank, it is still an enclosure. As noted in a previous post on Stonehenge, I believe it must have been an enclosure in woodland. Avebury more-or-less retains this condition and it is highly significant. It was a sanctuary: a sacred place in the sense of a place which was ‘set apart’ from, yet related to, the wider landscape. The photographs, above, show the site of Avebury from Windmill Hill (top). The church steeple can be seen in the centre of the top photograph and on the right of the middle photograph. The road and the barbed wire in the third photograph are an absolute screaming disgrace, equivalent to using Rome’s Forum as a coach park. I am very pleased that they are going to deal with the roads around Stonehenge but, first, they should implement a much cheaper and very much more important project by closing the wicked road through Avebury to motor vehicles.

We can view Stonehenge and Avebury in the light of Ken Dowden’s comment (European paganism 2000, p.27 ) “If there was an Indo-European homeland, there were no temples there, only landscape. Sacral area must therefore in origin be identified by geography, not buildings. The buildings we have today, where they do not represent long-standing religious tradition, continue a geographical sense of sacrality. In this sense ‘nature’ inevitably underlies the choice of place in which to perform ritual”

Nymans National Trust garden management

Stonehenge as landscape and garden

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Colin Renfrew wrote that ‘Most of us have been brought up to believe, for instance, that the Pyramids of Egypt are the oldest stone-built monuments in the world, and that the first temples built by man were situated in the Near East… It comes, then, as a shock to learn that all of this is wrong. The megalithic chamber tombs of western Europe are now dated earlier than the Pyramids – indeed, they rank as the earliest stone monuments in the world – so an origin for them in the east Mediterranean seems altogether implausible’ (Before Civilization, 1976 edn p.16).

This reads like a ‘mine-is-bigger/older-than-yours’ sort of argument. A greater truth is that Stonehenge AND the Pyramids were products of a Neolithic civilization which had its origins in West Asia. And both have a significant relationship to the landscape – which has received insufficent attention.

The only certain facts about the placing of Stonehenge are that it was in the midst of an agricultural community and it was aligned with the solstice. It was a sacred place, not on a hilltop and not a fort. To understand such a place, one has to engage with the planning and design of Neolithic sanctuaries, in, for example, the countries which are now Iraq, Malta, Egypt, Greece and France. The best examples are in Egypt and the most useful way forward may be to review what is known about ‘sacred gardens’ (sanctuaries) in Sumer, Babylon, Luxor and Wessex. To me, this suggests that the above images Stonehenge with a woodland backdrop are more likely to represent the original situation the views against open downland. I do not think it was not built as an eyecatcher ‘monument’. It was a sanctuary for rituals and ceremonies – and such activities were shielded from public gaze in West Asia. The encircling mound must also have blocked inward views, as the larger mound at Avebury still does.

English Heritage is planning a much-needed ‘restoration’ of the Stonehenge landscape and it would be good if a way could be found to allow both ‘woodland’ and ‘downland’ views of the site. Assuming this is not possible, another alternative would be to make a full ‘re-creation’ of Stonehenge in a woodland setting. It would not be such an expensive project and it would (1) reduce visitor pressure on the anicent ‘monument’ (2) allow visitors to walk amongst the re-created stones – which might just as well me made in re-constituted stone.

Judging garden design at the Chelsea Flower Show 2009

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Chelsea garden design judges 2009: can you guess who are the designers?

Here are the judges, understandably grim-faced while looking at the recipient of our Worst in Show Award for the 2009 Chelsea Show Gardens. Another problem is they are given the pottiest assessment criteria. The criteria are (1) has the designer met his/her own brief? (2) is the garden as neat and tidy as it could possibly be? (3) does the garden have style? These criteria are better suited to a dog show than a garden design competition.

The primary criterion should be: is the design of high quality? And to answer this question one must have a design theory. I urge the Chelsea organizers to read Vitruvius and to appoint only judges with an undestanding of the subject. For the competition to make a useful contribution to the art of garden design, the judges should ask:

Utilitas: does the garden have functions?
Firmitas: is the garden well made, in terms of construction and planting?
Venustas: is the garden beautiful/delightful/possessed of high aesthetic or artistic quality?

Then they can think about how well the garden meets the promised brief and, if they really must, about whether it is neat and tidy. The ‘style’ criterion should be discarded, not so much because it is irrelevant as because it is confusing and misleading: we want designs to have style but we do not want designers to aim for specific ‘styles’. With regard to the Vitruvian criteria, it is not necessary for every design to satisfy each of criteria, but if one or two are set aside then the second/third should be all the more fully satisfied.

See our review of the 2009 Chelsea Show Gardens – and of the judges decisions!

Fiberglass garden planters

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Warwick Vase re-created in fiberglass

We were pleased to discover that the owners of Warwick Castle agree with us about the high quality which can be achieved by using fiberglass to make garden planters. Since the original of the famous Warwick Vase is now in Glasgow, they sensibly commissioned a substitute made in fiber glass, as in the photograph above.

The fiber glass planter supplied by Crinklecrankle.com, below, is also in a public place. Compared to terracotta, it is much stronger, much lighter, frost-resistant and better at retaining water.

Terracotta coloured fiberglass planter in winter

Kenilworth Castle Elizabethan Garden Restoration

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Kenilworth Elizabethan Castle Garden

It is not beautiful. This is the main problem with the Kenilworth Castle garden restoration. They should have put a talented garden designer in charge of the project, with instructions to listen to the historical experts and be sure to produce a beautiful result. Tudor craftsmanship was excellent. This project looks as though it belongs in an upscale garden centre near the M25. The aviary is too big. The fence is too low. The obelisks are too high. The lawn-fringed paths are a total historical anachronism. The elements of the composition are out of scale with each other. It does not have the charm of a medieval garden or the dignity of a renaissance garden. It is a codge-up.

Press coverage of this significant garden restoration has concentrated on the cost (£2.1m). I disagree: if anything the budget was too low for a worthwhile project, justified by (1) an archaeological investigation which found the base of the original marble fountain (2) the remarkably detailed description in the Robert Langham Letter, describing Queen Elizabeth I’s visit to Kenilworth Castle in 1575. An excerpt from this letter is quoted below. I worry about Simon Thurley’s garden judgement with regard to gardens. He made a similar mistake with the restoration of the Privy Garden at Hampton Court. There many other things which could have been done with the money – and I would rather have seen a re-creation of a medieval castle garden. We have enough Tudor re-creations from the BBC without EH jumping on this bandwagon – they must be wondering how they could manage some Jane Austen re-creations. If EH thought renaissance gardens looked like this, they should visit Italy and France.

An excerpt from Robert Langham’s letter about Queen Elizabeth I’s visit to Kenilworth Castle in 1575: “Along the castle wall is reared a pleasant terrace of a ten foot high and a twelve broad, even underfoot and fresh of fine grass, as is also the side thereof toward the garden, in which, by sundry equal distances, with obelisks, spheres and white bears all of stone upon their curious bases by good show were set; to these, two fine arbours redolent by sweet trees and flowers, at each end one…. Then, much graced by due proportion of four even quarters, in the midst of each upon a base a two foot square and high, seemly bordered of itself, a square pilaster rising pyramidally of a fifteen foot high, symmetrically pierced through from a foot beneath until a two foot from the top, whereupon, for a capital, an orb of a ten inches thick…Redolent plants and fragrant herbs and flowers, in form, colour and quantity so deliciously variant, and fruit-trees bedecked with their apples, pears and ripe cherries. And unto these in the midst against the terrace a square cage, sumptuous and beautiful, joined hard to the north wall…. In the centre (as it were) of this goodly garden was there placed a very fair fountain, cast into an eight-square, reared a four foot high, from the midst whereof a column up set in shape of two atlantes joined together a back-half, the one looking east, the other west, with their hands upholding a fair-formed bowl of a three foot over, from whence sundry fine pipes did lively distil continual streams into the receipt of the fountain”

Garden Design and Landscape Architecture

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